“I don’t know,” Dean muttered. He dropped the backpack beside him and closed his eyes. “How about you?”
“I’ll live,” Avi replied.
“Yeah, always the damsel in distress. Of course she’ll live to die another day. Why do you always have to be in trouble, Avi? This is a mission, not a pity party. You are here to save yourself and others, but no, you want to be cuddled and doted on,” Nima spat.
“Nima,” Dean said in a very stern voice, “can we figure out our next move and not just sit here listening to you yapping?”
“How do we move when she always has to go to the sickbay, huh? Carry her on stretchers?”
“Hold on a minute, Nima. Do you guys hear something?” Kash asked.
“Yeah, the annoying moan of the worst marine that ever stepped into a cave,” Avi taunted.
“No, Avi, listen again.”
“I hear a beep.”
Everyone scrambled to their feet.
“That’s from me,” Dean said.
They all sighed.
“C’mon guys, let’s move. Remember, we don’t have much time.”
“Don’t move! Everybody get down, now!” Kash screamed as he ducked.
Nima made a dive for the floor and rolled a few meters away from where Kash was. Avi ran straight under a rock, and Dean screamed at her to get away before it came crashing down on her.
“This place is filled with bombs ready to go off at any moment,” Kash gasped as he crawled across the floor. “Probably lasers too. I could hear it everywhere, right behind the walls.”
“We can’t get far this way. We have to risk it and get out of here.”
“Standing up could trigger a blast, which would fling your pieces as far as you want to go,” Nima retorted.
“What the—” Kash muttered. He was frozen to the spot with fear when he came face-to-face with the very thing he was trying to run away from. Cold beads of sweat formed on his brows, and his hands trembled. He was too scared to breathe.
“Kash, what did you see? Kash, are you okay?” Avi whispered.
“I think he’s found a bomb. Kash, whatever you do, don’t move. Please don’t move a muscle,” Nima said.
Kash could barely hear anything; his heartbeat thumped loudly in his ears as blood rushed to his head. He closed his eyes for a second and looked again at the barely detectable object that was no bigger than his fingernail.
“Kash, please listen to me. It’s going to be alright. Just tell me what it looks like. Can you see any numbers on it?” Nima asked.
Kash peered closer; he could barely see anything on the perfectly camouflaged device. It was so tiny and looked every bit like a small rock. Perhaps it was only a scare tactic or some weapon to temporarily incapacitate them. He reached out to touch it.
Dean’s voice stopped him. “That would be a terrible decision.”
“How can you tell?”
“I am right behind you and can sense every move of your muscles. I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” Dean replied.
“It looks like some chip, nothing to be afraid of. Even if it’s dynamite, there isn’t much it can do.”
“Listen, man, don’t touch it. I repeat, don’t touch it. We all stay calm, and we can figure it out.”
Kash laughed. “Y’all just a bunch of sissies scared out of your wits. This is just a hidden microphone. I wasn’t sure at first, but I can see it now. I’ll just go ahead and rip it off. Enough eavesdropping for those guys.”
“Don’t touch, Kash, don’t touch,” Dean protested.
“What’s with you, man? I’ve seen this before, and I know what it is. There’s nothing to be worried about,” Kash replied confidently. As he made to touch the device, a tiny red light flashed, and Kash jumped away in fright. He tripped and landed right on the tiny chip, and everything went blank.
_____
There was utter silence in the cave. There was blood on the floor with gears, flashlights, and other stuff littered everywhere. Someone groaned, but the sound soon faded into a rasping cough that ended with a sharp intake of breath. Then all was still.
Nima raised her head a little and looked around her. Kash was out cold, same with Boris. Dean was staring back at her, wiggling his finger to get her attention. He placed a finger on his lips and pointed to the roof of the cave and a hollow in the rocks.
Boris rolled over on his side and groaned. His stitches had come apart when Avi crawled past him in her mad rush for safety. He bit his lip as he struggled to crawl up to the others.
Avi was alert but too scared to breathe or move. She had thought she was the only one alive and had lain there wondering what to do next.
Dean placed his finger firmly against his lips and used subtle signs to communicate instead. He was worried that with the microphones everywhere, it was getting too dangerous to discuss their next move. These powerful microphones could pick up whispers even through the walls. Communication was very vital if they were to progress on their mission, so he had to come up quickly with some code that the others would understand.
Dean decided to try out a code that was known to him and Miles. He took out his penknife from his pocket and tapped gently on the rock until he found a part that made a low sound that was loud enough for the others to hear. It was similar to the sound a cave critter would make as it burrowed through rocks. It would be difficult for the microphones to pick up the sound waves and interpret them.
Hello, he tapped. Talk. Yes. He tapped again and waited for their response.
When they said nothing, he made long and short sounds simultaneously while Avi, Nima, and Boris stared at him in confusion. They could barely fathom if he was playing a song or trying to tell them something. But by the third attempt, Nima got the hang of it. She scribbled something on the ground as Dean tapped, then smiled at Dean. It was all starting to make sense.
Yes, she tapped.
I can hear you, Boris tapped.
Dean was glad that he had them on the same line as him. Gradually, the sounds turned into characters, words, then phrases and sentences. They tapped back and forth, stopping at brief intervals to create the illusion of an animal burrowing in the rocks.
When Kash came to, he was surprised to see Dean tapping away at a rock. He wondered why they were having fun and playing games while he laid out cold. But the rapt attention on Nima’s face told him it wasn’t all fun and games.
Dean told his friends they had to stay as low as possible. The Russians saw and heard everything they did and would eliminate them if they continued to follow their tracks. They had to find a way to outsmart the Russians. Nima suggested splitting ways. They could split themselves into two groups and meet again in two hours. One group would stay back to wait while the other continued the mission.
It didn’t sound like a good idea, and no one was willing to stay back. They were all worn and almost out of supplies. Splitting up and possibly getting lost would only put more strain on them and waste their time. Besides, Boris was their only guide.
Avi suggested they could write their plans on paper and stay quiet the whole time. It seemed like a good idea until Nima reminded them that it would get more eyes and ears on them. If they were silent and the cameras could still detect their movement, they were still as susceptible as ever.
Then Kash came up with an idea to take the enemy off their scent. They could lead them into thinking they had a set plan for their mission and work in the exact opposite. In that way, it would be very difficult for the security officers to determine their next move.
More they look, less they see, Kash tapped out on the rock.
19
Chapter Nineteen
Underground cave, Yamantau
June 2019
The foggy presence in the room long after the beautiful steward had left kept Miles wondering where they came from. The scintillating urge to unload the juice that had secreted in there since his arrest five years ago had been replaced by a feeling of exhaustion. There was som
ething odd about it, though. Somehow, he felt like he was still being sapped of every ounce of energy left in him.
Within him was the will to get up, and that was all that was—the will and nothing more. His head rested against the headboard while his eyes searched through the haze. Even if he could talk, he wouldn’t know because he didn’t even attempt.
Suddenly, the haze began to dissipate, and he heard the bed creak as if someone was climbing up to join him. And there it was. He saw the face of the goddess, smiling at him and inching closer by the second. The more the fog disappeared, the more he saw. The goddess was on her hands and knees, unclad with her protruded belly, touching the bed.
“This is not real.”
The voice sounded like Miles’s, but he wasn’t sure the speech came out of him.
Miles’s jaw dropped. His mouth opened, but words didn’t come out of it. In that bed with him, the godly things about the naked woman before him were the mounds on her chest, the swollen nipples on them, and the aura that spread when she smiled at him. Still, no words were exchanged. It felt awkward for Miles to smile back. But some body parts had separate minds of their own. He felt the movement around his thighs and looked down to be sure it was his. He may have been drained of speech, but his dick had the courage to salute Her Majesty.
Suddenly, he noticed that they weren’t alone. There was a bearded man in the room too. The feature was similar to the drawing of the Veles deity he had seen on the screen in Howard’s basement. Close to the image was another figure, resembling Perun, and then Dazhbog. It looked like the entirety of Slavian deities had come to life, blinking and staring at them while they had their hands on their crotches the whole time.
Again, he heard himself say, “There is no way this is real. This is not real.”
Real or not, his heartbeat wasn’t calm. The way his heart pounded, if the bracelet were still on him, he would have splashed all over the room like a rotten tomato.
His heart almost gave out when the seemingly immortal feminine figure spread his legs apart. Miles was also naked, and his dick refused to stay quiet.
She slowly reached her mouth for his brave dick. Miles couldn’t wrap his mind around what was unfolding before him. To think that it was the same pregnant woman that he had seen the villagers revere like a goddess, about to suck whatever was left of his juice sac. His heart stopped.
When Miles opened his eyes, he discovered he was on a chair and in a room different from where he and the steward made love. Just like the previous scene, it wasn't easy to have a clear vision. But it wasn’t due to any fog this time. He rubbed his hands on his teary eyes. The blur slowly began to fade away.
He realized he wasn’t alone.
He heard his ex-girlfriend's voice, Dani, arguing with someone. A man’s voice responded to her. It was hard to make sense of what they said, but one could tell they were very furious with the barrage of foul words and their angry tones. A little girl that had been staring at Miles for a while turned her back on him. She was about five years old. Miles noticed her presence too. It seemed like a daydream, but he smiled nonetheless as it got to this part. He watched as the little girl went over to the table at the center of the living room. The little girl dipped her tiny finger into a small plate with white contents on it.
“No! No, stop!” Miles turned in the direction of Dani’s voice and saw her and a man arguing. Now, he was able to hear what they were arguing about. Dani was not happy that the man was bringing his stash home.
When Miles turned over to the little girl and saw that she was about to lick the finger she had dipped in the white product, he leaped forward in her direction.
Suddenly, the noise in the room died. Instead of his little girl, he was on top of a three-month-old polar bear cub. A bunch of people wearing gas masks was there. They stared at him like he was out of his mind. They were right for looking at him suspiciously. Miles had been behaving strangely since he entered the inner underground safehouse that looked like a city on its own. They had put up with his strange behavior for a while, but the last straw was his attempt to hurt the three-month-old pet. Two guards, also in masks, stepped in to seize him. They tied his hands and legs and put him in a truck.
“Guys, stop!” Miles yelled.
Miles seemed to have regained his senses again, but the guards had received instruction. They took him all the way down to a riverbank. There, he saw others that had been tied to various poles. When any of them died, if the birds didn’t get to them first, they were removed and taken to a different place to be buried. Their eyes were dark and swollen. The only possible explanation for their queer behavior and swollen faces was potential exposure to toxic chemicals. Miles did realize this, but a little too late. They tied him to a pole, too, and left him to die there.
Since pleading and begging for their mercy didn’t work, Miles switched to yelling angrily at them in frustration. They got back in their pick-up truck and drove off.
As soon as the sound of the vehicle faded into the distance, Miles heard a shuffle around the bush behind him. He tried to turn around, worried that it might be a wild animal.
The same ruddy boy that left him earlier had returned with his bag.
“Thank goodness!” Miles said. “You came back for me?”
The boy was mute as usual. His face was expressionless, making it difficult to tell if he was back for good. He held out his hand with the strap of the bag hanging on his small hand.
“Thank you, boy. That will be very helpful, if um…” Miles wriggled his hands, trying to make his helplessness known to the little boy, as if he hadn’t noticed.
The boy dropped the bag. He tapped his mask and pointed at Miles.
“Oh, the mask? I think I understand what you were trying to say. If you can help me get this loose…”
As if the boy understood, he walked over to him and began to pull on the rope. His effort was useless against the thick strings.
“Check the bag for a jackknife.”
The boy followed the direction of Miles’s eyes to his bag. He unzipped it and began to take out the materials in it. Miles shook his head whenever he brought out the wrong item and finally nodded when he saw the handle. The boy looked puzzled.
“Press that silver button on the side,” Miles instructed.
Miles tried to demonstrate but only got the boy confused. He dropped the handle and began to search the bag again. It took five minutes before the boy would go back to the handle again. Miles beckoned him over. When the boy’s finger touched the silver button by mistake, the knife sprung out. It startled the boy a bit before he used it to cut Miles loose.
Miles hugged the little boy in appreciation. When Miles tried to cut the others loose, the boy protested. He listened to the boy and put his stuff back inside his bag. He checked his palmtop and noticed that the battery bar was low. But there was a message from Howard Grant.
Miles clicked on the unread message. A picture of a little girl was displayed with a caption that read, You son of a bitch. You go against me, and she’s gone.
There was no doubt it was his little girl. She had his small pretty eyes and brown hair. The boy also noticed the emotion on Miles’s face and drew close to peek into the palmtop. Miles gritted his teeth.
Howard must have discovered that he didn’t go to Kyiv after all. And, of course, he must have picked up the signal on the bracelet.
______
IT Department
The security agents could have terminated Dean and his crew based on the information that Miles gave them, but the order they’d received from Yasenevo restrained them. So, they stayed glued to their screens in the IT department, monitoring every move that Dean and his colleagues made.
The agents noticed that Dean and his team were taking an observation of the rocky surfaces. Kash, Nima, and Avi took notes and nodded as if they were in a laboratory. Dean went from one rocky surface to the other while the rest of them followed closely until they all converged at a spot. It looked lik
e they had discovered something.
The agents heard a masculine voice that they believed belonged to Dean. It seemed like he was uttering instructions to his team. Kash took out something from his bag and handed it over to Dean, who made a big circle around the spot they had gathered around. They continued to do the same thing as they advanced close to the wall that separated the ancient minefield from one of the strongholds used as storage units for nuclear weapons. Until now, the security agents had presumed that they were illegal explorers. They had exercised patience with them, knowing that there was nothing of substance to be discovered under those rocks. If the illegal miners came to that realization, they would exit the facility. But when they noticed that they were minutes away from breaching the nuclear boundary, they had to stop them.
After some hours of digging, one of the agents came up with information on Boris Rusev using image identification software. They discovered that Boris was a former assassin for the Bulgarian government. They also looked up Nima Ahmad.
The security chief finally called the attention of his men.
“Alright, guys. Maybe the American was right. We know now that these people are not explorers. What is still giving me a headache is the connection between the Bulgarian assassin and the other foreigners. We have no idea what brought these people together here, but this is what we are going to do. We are going to put a knife on what holds them together. That way, they will turn on each other and begin to say things we need to hear.”
______
Dean’s plan to get through the weave of the rocky cave to the location known as Mezhgorye was near success. They stuck to the plan, appearing in front of the camera and making fake observations that would seem like they were hunting for treasure.
“Guys,” Boris called, “I think we are close now. Let’s find a way to pull down this wall and get to another side of the divide.”
Hunt for the Lost Sanctum Page 14